The Usual Suspects
by SCWLC
Summary: Plans rarely survive the first minutes of engagement with the enemy. This is true in more ways and cases than one. Zutara. The second genre is because this isn't really pure romance, but the site won't let you specify that it's more general than romance.


Title: The Usual Suspects

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my imminent mental breakdown.

Summary: Plans rarely survive the first minutes of engagement with the enemy. This is true in more ways and cases than one.

Notes: I messed with Katara's age by a year. Consider her to have had her fifteenth birthday days after she met Aang. Also, there are many notes to be had at the end of the fic, but if I tell you now, it gives everything away. Please sit back and enjoy the ride. Also, don't look too hard at the scenery. Those plot holes can really ruin the view if you pay too much attention to them. Also, I could have sworn I'd already posted this here. I guess not. It's up at the Katara_Zuko LJ community, but not here. Huh.

* * *

Zuko woke slowly, feeling a comfortable sense of relaxation and wellbeing. As his eyes fluttered open, he recognised that it was from the silken bed he occupied and the sleeping waterbender curled up against him. He smiled, gently caressing her back and hair, easing her into joining him in wakefulness.

She eventually yawned, blinked awake herself and smiled at him. "Good morning, Prince Zuko." Katara uncurled, and by the way her gentle smile turned into a smirk, her managing to rub herself against him every which way as she stretched was entirely deliberate.

"Wench," he murmured affectionately to her. Then he kissed her. There was no better way to wake up than this. Certainly it beat waking to his sister's insipid, snide, insulting and just generally nasty wake-up calls. Katara turned and settled over him, happily straddling her prince.

The door opened with a crash, and Zuko looked up, highly irritated. Doubly so because his sister had barged into his room unannounced _again_. "Good morning, Zuzu," she said cheerfully. "How are y-" she stopped dead and stared at Katara who was rolling her eyes rather dramatically.

"What do you want, Princess," said Katara, her voice just on the safe side of the line between respectful speech to a member of the royal family and punishable disrespect.

Azula glared at her brother. "Aren't you going to do something about your concubine?" she asked. She was annoyed, as she always was, by how much freedom Zuko gave to his favourite body slave.

"Why should I?" he asked, leaning back. "It annoys you. I like it when things annoy you." He grinned widely at her. "I especially like it when the two of you get into a fight."

Katara rolled her eyes, letting the one word, "Boys," speak for her. Shameless, she climbed out of bed, pulling on the clothes that marked her status and sashaying past Azula with another just-this-side-of-safe, "Princess."

Zuko watched her walk away, appreciating the view, until she was out of his sightline before shooting a look at Azula and asking, "Do you mind? I'm getting up now."

When his sister just sneered, he sighed, got up and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen, her cheeks flush in embarrassment and her whip around to give her naked brother privacy to dress. When he was clothed, he just walked past her, ignoring her the way she would have him in the same situation and heading for breakfast. "Zuko!" she snapped in aggravation.

He chuckled. Irritating his sister was one of his greatest pleasures in life. For years she'd been able to push every button he had, making him dance to her tune. All that had changed when the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe had been brought to the Fire Nation court as a curiosity. She was immediately placed with the slaves, and Zuko, wanting to see more of the strange-looking girl, had asked if she could be put on the rotation of maids cleaning his rooms. He had been nine and she had been seven, and in the weeks after his mother had died following that one cryptic night when she'd visited him and told him to never forget who he was, she had pulled him out of his funk.

Then she'd gone on to help his see Azula's manipulations for what they were. It had changed his relationship with everyone at the court at once. The moment her very presence at his bending practice couldn't throw him, he was finally able to improve easily and quickly. His father, pleased with his sudden and rapid increase in ability rewarded him with increased freedoms and privileges. Azula had never responded to the change well, and his ability to find her buttons and press them was something he still relished after so many years of being infuriated to the point of tears.

"Was there something you wanted, Azula?" he asked mildly as he walked down the hall.

She had to speed up briefly to walk beside him, and the added irritation showed. "Are you coming tonight when I finally destroy the Avatar? Not to mention dealing with Iroh."

"I still say chasing Uncle is a waste of our time," he told her. "Leave him to his teashop. If he wants to be a common tea-seller, what's it to anyone?"

"Oh, Zuzu," she crooned, "You still have that silly affection for the old man?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. Katara had only recently broken him of his normal kneejerk response to the nickname, and while he still didn't like it, he wasn't going to respond the way Azula wanted any more. "It truly amazes me the way we lie to the people," he responded obliquely. "Family is supposed to be the backbone of our nation, and the royal family is nothing more than a bunch of backstabbing, vicious thugs."

"You just insulted yourself," she pointed out, sweetly.

He shrugged. "Katara and I had an argument about it last week. She made some good points. I'm no better than you." He smiled sweetly back at her. "I'd happily dance on your grave as much as you would mine."

Then he walked away, leaving her staring agape at his back. Zuko wondered at that a little. Normally she'd follow him, sniping the whole way, but she was acting as though this was some sort of a surprise. He found Katara in the dining room, poring over their breakfast options for that morning. "It's not Gran-gran's sea prunes, but it'll do."

Zuko moved in close to her, pulling her tightly against him and murmuring in her ear as though whispering sweet nothings, "Are we still on for the plan?"

She smiled fondly and kissed around his ear, muttering back, "Azula confirmed she's going ahead with her own?"

"Yes," he replied, then kissed her far-too tempting lips.

"We're on," she confirmed in a whisper.

Mai's voice interrupted them. "Do you have to do that in here? Some of us would like to eat at that table."

Katara had always had quite a lot of sympathy for Azula's two friends. Mai's feelings for Zuko, such as they were, were used against her on a regular basis to ensure her cooperation, while Ty Lee was just outright threatened one way or another. Months later and it still incensed Katara that Azula had played dirty pool by threatening Ty Lee's circus friends to get the acrobat to join her in the hunt for General Iroh and the Avatar.

Because of that, she never took offence at anything Mai said to her and Zuko, and did her level best to keep her prince from retribution for any insults towards her from the noblewoman. She settled down, did her best to keep her conversation polite with Mai and had a genuinely fun debate about which of the earthbenders Azula was using in her takeover of Ba Sing Se was cutest.

"Oh, but you should see the Water Tribe boy that travels with the Avatar," Ty Lee declared happily. "He's just adorable."

"Really?" Katara inquired. "I'm kind of sorry Azula only dragged the pair of us out here for the final plot, then."

Ty Lee seemed particularly happy to have a girl to talk about boys with. Then again, Mai thought everyone was dull, and Azula's take on the matter was . . . unconventional at best. "Oh yes. He doesn't have really big muscles or anything, not like the Earth Kingdom boys, but he's all slender and trim. Like this one tightrope walker I knew, Guong, only he's got that exotic dark skin and his eyes are really really blue."

Katara nodded in contemplation. "That sounds interesting."

"If I didn't know better, I'd have to feel threatened, Slave," Zuko said jokingly. He hadn't used that term with her in any seriousness since her second week as one of his personal servants. It had become a running joke with them after he'd waited a year for her to be old enough to become his official concubine.

Breakfast finished and Katara left for the place she performed her 'duties'. In point of fact, Zuko had carefully arranged her schedule so that she had no duties in an official capacity beyond being his date at formal events and sleeping in the same bed as he did. Much of what she did in that time was bending practice.

She smiled in recollection of the first conversation she'd had with the nine-year-old firebender who had claimed ownership of her on the topic.

"_So they said that you're the last waterbender at the South Pole," he declared._

_She glared at him, mutinously, even as she stood there, pouring his tea carefully. She'd seen another servant being whipped her first day at the palace two weeks before and she hadn't wanted to experience that herself. "So what?" she demanded._

_Tact was a little further out of her grasp._

"_Well, I wanted you to come spar with me," he explained. "When I get older, if father puts me in charge of the army, we're not gonna be fighting firebenders, we'll be fighting earthbenders and waterbenders." He nodded decisively. "So I wanna be prepared for what a different kind of bender can do." He hastily added, "Not that you can beat me. Firebenders are the best!"_

_She would have been angry with him for saying something so stupid like that, but remembering made her sad. "I . . . I don't have any training," she explained. "I've been the first one in for_ever_. Mom . . . she tried to tell them it was her, not me, but they . . . that man he . . . k- killed . . ." She'd sobbed then._

_Through her tears, she'd seen his eyes go wide and he'd looked panicked before getting a look rather like he was about to stick his hand into a bucket of something really icky. Then he hugged her and said, "My mom's . . . gone. Too."_

_A bond had been forged in that moment that went past his initial curiosity about the unknown and exotic. He had also raided the palace library repeatedly for scrolls about other benders and bending styles. Over time, he'd garnered quite a collection of waterbending scrolls and she'd learned how to bend from a combination of watching firebenders, particularly Zuko, train, and following the diagrams on the scrolls._

_He had learned too, and had joyfully used everything he picked up from them against his sister. As a purist, she had no use for other bending styles, preferring to perfect her training traditionally. Zuko had smirked the first time he'd been able to literally catch her blue fire and redirect it against her, much to her fury. It had won the match, and some of his father's even more hard-won approval. One of the first privileges from that had been the right to choose his personal concubine. It was a position that could promote a slave into respectable society, taking her from nothing to a person of some rank in the palace hierarchy. Zuko had promptly announced his intentions to wait for Katara to be thirteen, and thus old enough for him to choose her._

_It was the most expedient way for him to help her out of the slavery she had been forced into, and a respectable way for a prince to enter into a relationship with a peasant. They fell in love in the process._

_Ozai had been less than impressed on the discovery of the trained waterbender living in his palace. Katara, after years of living in the pit of snakes that made up the society of every class of the Fire Nation, including the slaves, had made a very large production of her beliefs in the superiority of the Fire Nation and effectively made her a turncoat to her people. Privately, she told Zuko that she wanted to escape and asked him to leave with her._

_That was the start of the plan._

It had taken a long time for it to reach fruition. They had wanted to run when they were not in the heart of the nation to start with, when they had a good chance of getting away, and possibly making a statement at the same time.

Now was the time. Azula, Mai and Ty Lee had an in with the king of the city, having assumed the identities of Kyoshi warriors. There was an ambush planned of the Avatar, and they had already captured General Iroh, placing him in the Crystal Catacombs.

Everything they had heard indicated that acting on the Avatar's behalf should earn them a free ride out of the city. Then they were going to find the Water Tribesmen they knew were somewhere nearby and see if Katara could make a place for them with her kinsmen. Zuko had already lined up his persona as the son of a nobleman who had rescued Katara from the evil Prince Zuko.

She had just finished working through the first of her forms when Zuko came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck. "Stop that," she said batting ineffectually at him. "I'm all sweaty."

"You still smell good," he replied. "But I wanted to spar with you a little, then maybe we could have a bath together."

"You only every think of one thing," she complained, jokingly, turning around and pulling away in the process. "But if you want a thorough dunking, I'm happy to oblige."

He grinned widely and stepped away and into a classic opening stance. "Bring it on, spunky," he used her hated nickname.

"I'll make you eat those words," she said.

He moved first, slamming ball after ball of fire at her, but she was already moving, blocking and using her water whips to come in underneath his attacks and put out the halo of flames around his fists. Then she struck, needle-sharp shards of ice hurtling through the air at him, just barely blocked with a wall of fire.

So it went, neither winning the fight, until Katara pulled out something she'd been working on ever since she'd heard a Fire Nation healer comment that her healing abilities as a waterbender must work because the human body had so much water in it. Her stance shifted and her hands changed into the oddly clawed shape she needed to effect her bending.

Quite suddenly, Zuko stopped where he stood and she smiled in delight. Carefully moving her hands, she watched as his own hands mirrored her movement. "What are you . . . How are you . . . ?" he asked, shocked. Katara let him go.

"It's something new I'd been working on," she said with a grin. "Did you know how much water there is in people and plants and animals?"

"A lot?" he guessed.

She nodded eagerly. "I can't hold it for long, but I thought it could be my secret weapon," she explained. "I practiced on the vines in the garden and then on that mean dragon hawk that keeps biting everyone."

"You are brilliant," he told her. Then he sobered. "We'll need every advantage tonight."

"I know," she said. "That's why I was showing you now. I didn't want to surprise you in the fight."

"Having warned me, beaten me and subdued me," Zuko said. "Can we have that bath now?"

They headed for the baths giggling like children. What they did there was distinctly unchildlike, but they weren't children any more, so that was hardly a problem.

That night, they waited with the Dai Li on Azula's strike force, Mai and Ty Lee. Oddly, Mai and Ty Lee seemed surprised at Katara's presence. It was as though they had expected her to be doing something else. What that was, neither Zuko nor Katara could guess. There was a long moment of anticipation, and then they came bursting in, shocking the Avatar, his friends and General Iroh.

As the fight started, they exchanged looks, quickly circling around the room to better angles of attack, and took the Dai Li completely by surprise. The confusion worked to their, and the Avatar's, advantage. Only Azula didn't let the change in plans faze her.

With a shriek, she threw herself at Zuko, trying to kill him for turning on her. Between them, however, Mai and Ty Lee had been knocked out, the Dai Li, having been thrown into brief disarray were losing as the distraction cost them. Katara took a quick glance at the fight and suddenly saw Azula winding up to deliver a fatal blast of lightning to her brother. He was in no position to get out of the way and had no block.

Without hesitation, she bent the princess to a standstill in time to receive the full force of Zuko's blow. They had almost turned the tide of battle when a fresh crowd of Dai Li poured into the catacombs. "Kill them!" shrieked Azula.

The man in the lead smiled nastily. "Long Feng!" shouted the Avatar.

"Yes, indeed," the man said with a grin. "Thanks to you, princess, we have complete control of the city that we did not have before. Now I can finally do away with that useless king and the Dai Li will control Ba Sing Se fully, as they should have done years ago." He turned to his own men. "Deal with them."

Now it was just a matter of fighting their way out. They got lucky in one thing. The Dai Li were as concerned about their fellows as other soldiers, and taking a hostage granted them reasonably free passage out, in the end.

They had made it to the Avatar's bison; Prince and concubine, hostage, Earth King, bear, General Iroh and the Avatar and his friends. Then they all piled on for a desperately overloaded and low flight to where the Water Tribesmen were waiting. Zuko was staring warily at the bear, when suddenly the Avatar said, "Katara! I'm so glad you're okay. I was worried when Azula took you."

"What?" Katara asked, blankly. "When . . . Azula . . . took me?" she asked, trying to figure out the sense of the words.

Everyone on the bison's back slowly turned to stare at her except Zuko, who was dividing his time between the Avatar and the bear, and the Dai Li officer, who was tied up and squashed under the little earthbending girl. "Yes," answered the Water Tribe boy. "We figured out Azula had you and we went looking. All we found was him," he jerked a thumb at General Iroh. "And now you show up with Prince Give-me-the-Avatar and you're not even blinking that he helped us get out."

"Prince, Give-me-the-Avatar?" Zuko asked, baffled. "What are you talking about?"

Suddenly, his uncle looked extremely concerned. "They are referring to your quest of three years to retrieve the Avatar so you might return home to the Fire Nation," he said.

"His what?" Katara said, frowning. "I'd think I'd remember him leaving." Then she looked at the Water Tribe boy. "You look really familiar . . ." She trailed off, then her eyes went wide as though having a breakthrough. "Sokka?" He slowly nodded. "Sokka!"

Zuko's eyes were very wide. "Your brother? Your brother is travelling with the Avatar? I might as well throw myself off the bison now," he muttered. "Let me guess," he added. "Your father is in charge of the Water Tribe warriors we're going to meet up with."

"Actually, yes," said Sokka from somewhere under his sister's very enthusiastic hugging.

"Just to clarify," Sokka said as he pried his sister off of him enough to speak. "You don't remember us?"

"Why would I?" Zuko asked. "Today's the first time I've ever seen any of you. The only reason I agreed to help Azula with her plan to capture Uncle was that Katara and I had been planning to escape for a few months. This was the perfect way to start running already outside the Fire Nation."

"What?" Aang demanded. "That makes no sense. You haven't been back in three years and Katara's never been there except for that one time to Roku's temple."

By then they were arriving at the Fire Nation ship the Water Tribe warriors had taken. There were a few confused moments of greeting, but soon Katara's father had shouted, "What?" and it was fairly evident he'd heard the other side of the story. He cupped her face, looking at her searchingly, and said, "Katara?"

"I missed you, Dad. Whether they're right and it's only been a short while or I'm right and I was taken when I was seven, I missed you so much." Her voice broke on the last word and they hugged.

They had left the Dai Li officer tied up to the side, but they had forgotten him except for the brief note that he was the enemy and needed to be watched by some guards delegated to the task by Hakoda. So everyone was taken by surprise when he said, "I don't understand. This has never happened before."

Zuko reacted first. "What's never happened before?" he snapped with the full authority he had been trained to have.

"Both of you," the man said, unhelpfully.

Everyone was confused, until suddenly Sokka, Aang and Toph said, "Jet!" at the same time.

"What?" Hakoda asked on behalf of everyone else.

They explained about the boy, Jet, and how he had been brainwashed. "I think," Sokka said, fixing the man with a glare, "That he's telling us that Zuko and Katara have been brainwashed like Jet. They can't remember what happened, only what they were told happened."

"Something went wrong," Aang said slowly. "They wanted Zuko and Katara to act a particular way, but something in them resisted and they're not acting as they should."

The Dai Li man seemed to realise he'd said far too much, and stopped talking. No matter the questions, threats or anything else levelled at him, he refused to answer any more questions. Eventually, however, Katara tired of doing things the nice way. "Enough," she said.

"Katara," Sokka said, "I know you think kindness will bring everyone around in time, but-"

She shot him a dismayed look. "I'm sorry my previous self was a wimp. I'm just sick of waiting." She shot the man a nasty smile and said, "We've done things the nice way. I'm going to do them the quick way."

Zuko knew what was coming and blanched. It was an aspect of her abilities with the human body that always bothered him. He knew she had to force herself into the appropriate mindset to use them that way, but it was like she was another person when she did what he'd termed mindbending.

"What?" Aang demanded. "What are you going to-" he was muffled suddenly by Zuko's hand over his mouth.

"Don't distract her," Zuko told him. "She's never made a mistake but if those memories are made up enough, this would be a very bad time to find out how unpractised she is."

Aang's eyes were wide and everyone watched, stunned as she pulled water out of her waterskin, gloved both her hands with it, placed them on the Dai Li's head and suddenly, a faint glow appeared, shining first out of the man's eyes, nose and mouth. Then he began to sweat, and that glowed too. It crept off his head, and up Katara's arms until it reached her shoulders, neck and finally, her eyes, nose and mouth as well. The man started to shake, strange choked noises escaped his throat, but Katara didn't waver for an instant.

Then it was suddenly over. She let him go and her control of the water with him. The man collapsed to the deck and Katara didn't look far behind. Zuko hurried to her side, telling the guards, "Just put him on a bunk somewhere. I don't think he'll be doing anything for a while."

"What did you do?" Aang asked in a vague sort of horror.

Katara curled gratefully into Zuko's chest as he cradled her close. "I read his mind," she told the Avatar. "It's not easy and I don't like doing it, but we weren't going to get anything out of him."

The blind girl asked, "So what did you find out?"

"I know what they tried to do," Katara said. "And I think I also know why it didn't work the way it was supposed to."

She was about to continue explaining, when Zuko demanded that everyone head inside and Katara be put somewhere she could rest while explaining. So they trooped inside and finally settled down in one of the meeting rooms. That was when the Avatar's patience ran out. "Please, Katara," he said. "Tell us. What happened to you?"

"I don't remember any of it," she said. "But they took us into one of the brainwashing rooms under Lake Laogai, and they . . . they changed both our memories of the last eight years."

"Eight years!" chorused Hakoda and Sokka.

General Iroh gently said, "Perhaps we had best allow young Katara to finish her tale." He looked as perturbed at Katara's brother and father did, however.

"Thank you, General," Katara said with a smile. "Zuko was supposed to have wound up totally cowed by Azula, and under her thumb." She rolled her eyes. "As if that would ever happen in real life."

"What about you?" Sokka demanded. "What did they make you think?"

"I was _supposed_ to think Zuko had taken it all out on me," she said. "I was told I had been taken to the Fire Nation in the raid that killed Mom, and I was a slave there. Eventually Zuko's concubine and favourite punching bag."

Sokka and Hakoda were clearly about to leap across the table and murder Zuko with their bare hands. Toph seemed to have spotted this, because the next moment, the floor bucked under them, sending them back into their seats. "I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure Sugar Queen wouldn't be as nice to Sparky there if he'd been beating her."

It stopped the two dead in their tracks and they settled back. Clearly ready to throttle the prince at a moment's notice.

"Thanks," Katara told the little earthbender.

"No problem. Now keep explaining."

Katara nodded. "Like I said, we were both supposed to be cowed, and I wasn't even supposed to have been trained in my bending." She shook her head. "The thing is, part of the process involves putting the subjects into a . . . a pool in the caves. The walls deaden sound and they float you in this water so that nothing will interfere with what they want you to think."

"Water?" Sokka said suspiciously. "Does this have anything to do with you reading that guy's mind? And whatever you did to Jet?"

She blinked. "I don't know what I did to Jet," she said. "But if I was using water to do something with his mind, then probably." She frowned, looking for the right way to explain her theory. "This is all just theory, mind," she told them. "But there were crystals at the bottom of the pool and they glowed. Fong, the Dai Li, even remembers thinking the glow didn't look the same as usual. I think I . . . I met Zuko in the middle, and we combined our memories and they . . . they didn't work out the way Azula and the Dai Li wanted."

"What do you mean?" Aang asked.

"Well," Katara explained, slowly. "You said I knew Zuko before. So since we were in each other's heads, when I saw his memory showing something that wasn't like him, I . . . corrected it. And he must have done the same for me."

Iroh showed the greatest understanding. "So you have each other to thank for the degree to which you preserved your true selves."

"Probably," Katara admitted. "But you have to understand, Fong doesn't believe there's any way to correct it. I'll probably never remember what actually happened over the last few years, and neither will Zuko."

"What _do_ you remember," Hakoda asked.

Over the next few hours, Katara and Zuko told their story. Hakoda, Sokka and Aang each had to be restrained from killing Zuko at various points. Most particularly when they were informed that Zuko wasn't going to stop treating Katara as he always had in his memory. That is, his best friend and lover. It took a lot of strenuous explanations from Iroh to clear up the intricacies of the relationship of a personal concubine to her prince, and a promise from Zuko that he _was_ going to marry Katara before they settled for simply keeping a very close eye on him.

So they sailed on, leaving Azula and her friends in the hands of the Dai Li of Ba Sing Se, preferring to pick their fights. Since she was no longer in the fight, they could go on to concentrating on what to do during the Day of the Black Sun.

Post fic notes: What can I say? I love the Dai Li. They provide so many interesting possibilities. My inspiration for this fic was another Zutara trope. That is, Katara is raised in the Fire Nation and becomes Zuko's something-or-other. I crossed that with Dai Li brainwashing, because I just love the possibilities inherent in that. I have a lot of bunnies that have the Dai Li making Zuko and Katara believe all kinds of interesting things. The difficult part is creating a justification for them to do it.

Here, if that wasn't clear, Azula wanted to have the firepower her brother could provide, just totally under her thumb. Katara was a bonus, because if she could make Katara think she was just a weak and powerless concubine, beaten by her powerless master, she's taken a strong player on Aang's side out of the equation. What I wanted to happen was that Katara's ability to get into someone's mind gets away from her while they're in a sort of sensory deprivation tank. The point of the tank, after all, is to keep extraneous factors from messing with the settling in period for new memories. But how much more interfering can you get than two people inside each other's heads?

I'm not continuing this, at least, not at this time, for two reasons. First, Zuko-joins-the-gang-after-Ba Sing Se has been overplayed. We know how that story goes. Second, I'm working on a Airbender's Child, which is a really big project, and I don't want to be doing two at the same time. Third, I wrote this because I wanted to write something that didn't need me to think. So feel free to revel in the plot holes, because this is an off the cuff run that I just wanted to write for the sake of writing without worrying overhard about how good or bad it is.


End file.
